Motivation and Emotion
Full course description
Emotions refer to subjective experiences characterized by changes in mental affective state and bio-psychological expressions caused by environmental changes. Emotions strongly drive (motivate) us to behave in a certain direction. They mainly appear when our intentions and goals are experienced as either satisfied, threatened or frustrated; which then will force (motivate) behaviour into the desired direction. The aim of the module is to study Emotion from different cognitive-social and biological perspectives and to understand their role in guiding/motivating human behaviour. The module starts with the classic theories of emotion and then continues with several relevant topics, including cognitive and biological perspectives on causation of emotion and motivation, emotion- regulation and self-determination, social-communicative functions of emotion expressions, the interaction between genes, stress and affective-emotional behaviour, the relation between sleep, emotion regulation and affective behaviour, as well as topics related to emotion and, or motivational problems as seen in work stress or problems with goal setting.
Course objectives
Students are able:
- to explain emotion and how they steer our motivation and behaviour from different theories/approaches;
- to explain neural, cognitive and social processes in relation to emotion and emotional (motivated) behaviour;
- to compare and criticise different theories related to emotion and emotional behaviour;
- to apply the theoretical perspectives, by recognising and exemplifying relevant concepts in a situation.